Jim Lewis: Featured Woodworker at Showcase 2018

This weekend, March 24 & 25, from 10-5: Woodworkers Showcase 2018, the largest woodworking expo in the Northeast, at the Civic Center in Saratoga.

Hundreds of exhibits; with lectures, demos, classes, plus woodworkers and turners from all over the region showing the finest examples of their work. It’s a great place to shop for tools and materials, to learn new tricks and techniques, to grab a simple wooden toy for your kid or grandkid or, let’s be honest, for yourself.

It’s a great place to be amazed

This year, Showcase holds a special treat for me. I’m thrilled to have been selected as the Featured Woodworker. I hope you can come— I’ll be showing a range of work from my last two decades as a builder and designer.

The picture at the top is the Ambo (lectern) from the Bishop Hubbard Interfaith Chapel at College of St. Rose Chapel. We delivered it 21 years ago last month, along with its companion Altar, and both of them will be at Showcase. I spent Tuesday getting them ready for the show— sprucing them up, as we say in the woodworking biz.

They will be joined by other pieces, like the Chapel Ambo from St. Agnes Cemetery in Menands, shown below.

Looking over these pieces, thinking about how we built them and why we designed them that way, brings back a lot of memories. It feels great to have created such a solid body of work. I hope you can come out and see them— it will be a wonderful show, and I’m just a small part of it.The Lily Ambo for the chapel at St. Agnes Cemetery was carved from Ash, with a top veneered from curly ash and maple burl. It was challenging on many levels, and one of those pieces we are grateful we’ve had the chance to build.

What’s next on my horizon? You never know. Maybe some street flower sculptures, maybe some dome-type structures like Red Bud, maybe folding furniture. For the moment, it’s a return to the classics as we build differently proportioned versions of a couple of our favorite liturgical pieces— the Sacramentine Tabernacle and the College of St. Rose Tabernacle. We’ll keep you posted!

A warm thanks to Albany Diocesan Cemeteries and the College of St. Rose for lending back their furniture for this show